Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
by danrdarrenc
Summary: The way I think Deathly Hallows should have ended. Harry walking through the castle after the Battle of Hogwarts. Oneshot,songfic based on "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from the show "Les Miserables".


It was a bright sunny day at the end of June, and a boy of seventeen walked toward a giant, black, gleaming castle. The weather and state of the castle seemed to mock him. The sun was so bright; the windows shined with its reflection. The grounds and the building were eerily quiet – the hustle and bustle of students and teachers running around talking and going from class to class was no longer there. Everyone had abandoned Hogwarts when the war broke out and no one had returned. The silence echoed what the boy was feeling inside – emptiness.

_**There's a grief that can't be spoken,**_

_**There's a pain goes on and on.**_

_**Empty chairs at empty tables,**_

_**Now my friends are dead and gone.**_

Harry walked into the castle that had once been his home. He was not paying attention to where he was going; his feet seemed to carry him to the seventh floor and the corridor of Barnabas the Barmy. His feet seemed to automatically pace in front of the painting three times, his mind following with thoughts of 'I need the room where we practiced Defense Against the Dark Arts'. A door appeared in the wall in front of which Harry was standing and he limply opened it and walked inside.

It seemed to Harry like it was ages ago when he, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Luna, and so many others had first stepped into the Room of Requirement and discussed the rebellion against Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic. It was a lifetime ago that he, Harry, had stood under the mistletoe and had his first kiss with Cho Chang.

_**Here they talked of revolution,**_

_**Here it was they lit the flame,**_

_**Here they sang about tomorrow **_

_**And tomorrow never came.**_

Harry blindly looked around the room in which he and his friends had once practiced magic. He barely took in his surroundings, noticing only how empty and lonely the room felt and looked. As he stared around at the quiet and vacant room he could see all those he had taught laughing and trying to perfect the spells they had learned as if they were there with him again.

These friends he had called upon to help him in his final battle against Voldemort, a call which they all had answered willingly and immediately. Though most were no longer at school, they had all jumped at the chance to be of assistance to the boy who had given them so much. It was on that battlefield that all those friends had died in the effort to fight off evil. The spells he had taught them were not powerful enough against Voldemort and his followers; the pain he, Harry, felt at asking the D.A. members to join him in his battle from which he alone survived, was unbearable.

_**From the table in the corner,**_

_**They could see a world reborn,**_

_**And they rose with voices ringing,**_

_**And I can hear them now;**_

_**The very words that they had sung**_

_**Became their last communion**_

_**On the lonely barricade, at dawn.**_

Harry walked out of the Room of Requirement wondering why it had been he who had survived when no one else had. He was dying inside at the thought that it was his fault that all of his friends were dead – Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Ginny, Cho, everyone from Dumbledore's Army. It should have been he who had died for it was his battle, and he only hoped that they could all forgive him for not dying with them.

_**Oh my friends, my friends forgive me**_

_**That I live and you are gone**_

_**There's a grief that can't be spoken,**_

_**There's a pain goes on and on...**_

Harry walked through the hallways of Hogwarts chased by phantoms and memories of the friends he had gotten killed. Their faces seemed to be everywhere – at the windows, in the classrooms, in the halls themselves. He entered the Great Hall where he had spent so many mornings, afternoons, and nights eating and laughing with his friends; nowhere did the emptiness of the castle seem so great as it did here. The four long house tables were completely deserted and blank. They were dirty, too; it seemed even the house-elves no longer lived in the castle.

Harry walked to the end of the Great Hall and sat down at the table that was once part of Gryffindor house. As he sat there the amount of grief that swept over Harry was so strong that he let out all of the emotion he had built up inside of him; he wept and he screamed. He could not understand why they had all sacrificed themselves for him; he did not think that he was worth their deaths, though he knew that those sacrifices were what enabled him to defeat Voldemort in the end. Still, his heart and soul broke at the idea that his friends would never see the light of day again and that, forevermore at Hogwarts, there would be empty chairs at empty tables.

_**Phantom faces at the window,**_

_**Phantom shadows on the floor,**_

_**Empty chairs at empty tables **_

_**Where my friends will meet no more.**_

_**Oh my friends, my friends don't ask me**_

_**What your sacrifice was for**_

_**Empty chairs at empty tables**_

_**Where my friends will sing no more.**_

4


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